Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD)
Common Implementation Strategy
Eight Meeting of the Marine Strategy Coordination Group (MSCG)
13-14 November 2012, Brussels
Title: / Updated Concept paper on the technical assessment of Member States submissions required under Article 12 of the Marine Directive
Number: / MSCG/8/2012/3
Agenda Item: / 4 d
Date prepared: / 25 October 2012
Prepared by: / Milieu Consortium & DG ENV

Summary

The aim of this paper is to outline and describe the overall concept for checking and assessing the technical content of Member States’ reports on the Initial Assessment of their marine waters (Article 8), the determination of GES (Article 9) and the setting of environmental targets (Article 10).

This paper includes, inter alia, a description of the envisaged steps in the technical assessment process, the key questions that will need to be answered to assess the completeness, adequacy, consistency and coherence of Member States reports, an identification of the expected sources of information that will be used to answer the questions and make the assessments and the timetable foreseen for the assessment of Member State’s reports.

This third version reflects the discussion held at the previous meetings of MSCG and MD and the comments received from different MS. This paper is a living document and can still be modified in view of the actual process.

Requested Action

·  MSCG is requested to take note of the updated concept paper.

EUROPEAN COMMISSION, DIRECTORATE GENERAL FOR ENVIRONMENT

SERVICE CONTRACT N° 070307/2011/606188/SER/D2 – TASK C

Concept paper on the technical assessment of Member States submissions required under Article 12 of the Marine Directive

Version 3.0

Submitted to:
Joachim d’Eugenio and Leo de Vrees
European Commission
Directorate General Environment
Directorate D – Water, Marine Environment and Chemicals
Unit D2 – Marine Environment and Water Industries
Submitted by:
Milieu Ltd.
Rue Blanche 15
B-1050 Brussels
Belgium
29 October 2012 /


/


MEGAPESCA

The authors of this report are Claire Dupont and Alice Belin from Milieu Ltd, Steve Nixon from WRc and Eduard Interwies from InterSus. This report is provided under Contract No 070307/2011/606188/SER/D2 – Task C.
It must be stressed that views expressed in this report which are not otherwise assigned are those of the authors and are not necessarily shared by the European Commission.
Milieu Ltd. (Belgium), 15 rue Blanche, B-1050, Brussels, tel: 32 2 506 1000; Fax 32 2 514 3603; e-mail: and alice.belin@milieu; web address: www.milieu.be

Contents

1 Introduction 7

1.1 Background 7

1.2 Outputs of the Technical Assessment 8

1.3 Purpose of this document 8

2 General approach to technical assessment used to date 9

2.1. Methodological Framework 10

2.2. What information will be used in the assessment? 11

2.3. Timetable for checking and assessments of MS reports 11

3 Assessment of Completeness 14

4 Technical Assessment 15

4.1. Assessment of adequacy 15

4.2. Assessment of Consistency 15

4.3. Assessment of Coherence 16

5 Follow-up process 18

5.1. Links with next implementation steps 18

5.2. In-depth assessments 18

5.3. Role of MD 18

5.4. The Role of the RSC 19

Annex 1 - Draft outline of the report on the Article 12 assessment: 21

Background / 9

1  Introduction

1.1  Background

According to Directive 2008/56/EC of 17 June 2008 establishing a framework for community action in the field of marine environmental policy (the Marine Directive), in July 2012, the Member States (MSs) should have completed their Initial Assessment (Article 8), the determination of GES (Article 9) and the setting of environmental targets (Article 10). Member States are then required to notify the Commission on the outcomes and products of the assessment and determinations by 15 October 2012 latest.

Following these submissions, the European Commission will have six months to assess these products and submit a report informing Member States whether in its opinion the elements notified are consistent with the Directive and provide guidance on any modification it considers necessary (Article 12 as reproduced in the box below).

As agreed upon at the last Marine Directors’ meeting, the Article 12 process is seen as an opportunity and a supporting mechanism for the follow-up process, which should ensure that ‘the lessons learnt are incorporated in the preparation of the next steps of the implementation with a view to closing existing gaps and increasing coherence and consistency’. This relates in particular to the development of monitoring programmes in 2014 and programmes of measures in 2015, and the revision of the assessment starting in 2018.

Article 12

Notifications and Commission’s assessment

On the basis of all the notifications made pursuant to Articles 9(2), 10(2) and 11(3) in respect of each marine region or subregion, the Commission shall assess whether, in the case of each Member State, the elements notified constitute an appropriate framework to meet the requirements of this Directive and may ask the Member State concerned to provide any additional information that is available and necessary.

In drawing up those assessments, the Commission shall consider the coherence of frameworks within the different marine regions or subregions and across the Community. Within six months of receiving all those notifications, the Commission informs Member States concerned whether, in its opinion, the elements notified are consistent with this Directive and provides guidance on any modifications it considers necessary.

The aim of this paper is to outline and describe the overall concept for checking and assessing the technical content of Member States’ submissions. It includes:

·  Illustration and description of the envisaged steps in the technical assessment process;

·  The key questions that will need to be answered to assess the completeness, adequacy, consistency and coherence of Member States reports;

·  Identification of the potential/expected sources of information that will be used to answer the questions and make the assessments;

·  The follow-up process after the Article 12 assessment, including in-depth assessments and the role of Regional Sea Conventions.

1.2  Outputs of the Technical Assessment

The first Commission assessment, six months after submission by Member States of their reports, would have to be by necessity undertaken at a relatively low level of detail.

The output of the technical assessment could be a Summary report and a Commission report with annexes on individual Member States as country fiches and on regional coherence (see Annex 1 for a draft outline of the output). The report will include recommendations addressed to the Member States, the Regional Sea Conventions and the EU. Potential topics for recommendations include monitoring programmes, any need for harmonisation at EU level or revisions of the EU Decision, knowledge gaps and corresponding research or monitoring needs, proposals for joint programming with the Regional Sea Conventions.

In these reports, some elements might need immediate attention and improvement by Member States, for instance when the applied framework is not consistent i.e. if there are inconsistencies between the different elements of the national report. Some elements would be best addressed when developing monitoring programmes, for instance because the basic data is not available. Others can best be incorporated in the next MSFD cycle, for instance because there is now a clear gap in knowledge, or in a review of the COM Decision, which should be carried out as soon as possible after the completion of the Article 12 assessment.

At a later stage, after the 6 months, an in-depth analysis for different descriptors/elements could be carried out.

1.3  Purpose of this document

The purpose of this paper is to describe the overall approach for the technical assessment of Member States’ products required under Articles 8, 9 and 10 of the Marine Directive, that are due to be notified to the Commission by 15 October 2012 latest.

It identifies the means of checking the completeness of the information provided and the key aspects of the assessment of adequacy, consistency and coherence. It also provides an indication of the intended depth of analysis for the various topics and aspects of the respective Articles. The intention is to get feedback from Member States and stakeholders on the overall approach and priority setting. An open discussion should benefit both the Commission and the Member States.

Milieu Ltd Consortium
October 2012 / Concept paper on the technical assessment of Member States submissions required under Article 12 of the Marine Directive

General approach / 12

2  General approach to technical assessment used to date

The figure below shows the general approach to this type of assessment that the Commission has used to date, for example on the Water Framework Directive, and would use as a basis for the Marine Directive.

Steps of technical assessment


The consultants to the Commission will undertake a technical checking and assessment of Member States’ reports and submissions (i.e. on completeness, adequacy, consistency and coherence) thereby providing the information to the Commission for any follow-up actions and communications with Member States. The Commission is solely responsible for assessing what is and what is not compliant in terms of the MSFD.

The first step would be the assessment of completeness of Member States’ electronic reports. This involves checking whether all requested information has been provided in the Member States’ reports. This first assessment allows the identification of important gaps, e.g. missing information for a particular GES descriptor, and supports the Commission in its assessment of whether additional information is required from the Member State.

As a second step, the reports would be subject to a technical assessment and their contents checked for adequacy (i.e. assessing whether the reported information is good enough to meet the objectives of the Directive and the technical requirements of Articles 8, 9 and 10), consistency (i.e. assessing the logical flow of reporting of one Member State for the different Articles, including the identification of missing links, conflicts and gaps) and coherence (i.e. assessing the relationships between the reports of the Member States, firstly within one marine region or sub-region and secondly across the EU). The purpose of the technical assessment would be to cover all potential contents of the reports. In this sense, the depth of the assessment would be necessarily limited and the technical assessment will be used for the compliance check of the implementation of the first three steps of the Marine Strategy.

Finally, specific topics that are deemed of key importance and have been identified in the technical assessment stage as potentially problematic or of strategic importance may be subject to an in-depth assessment. However, such in-depth assessments will be carried out later and are not part of the Article 12 process itself. They will serve as a learning process for the Commission and the Member States with a view to working towards improvement of the further implementation of the Directive.

These different elements of the technical assessment are described in more details in Sections 3 and 4 below.

2.1.  Methodological Framework

This document identifies questions that would be the basis of the technical assessment of Member State’s reports and information, as part of the Article 12 process. The questions provide an indication of the intended depth of analysis for the various Marine Directive topics. In some cases they are necessarily broad, and should be subject to further elaboration and specification at a later stage of the process. These questions would address how the technical and legal provisions of the Directive have been implemented. Some questions are also purely informative, i.e. describe the situation, but are not necessarily directly linked to an obligation of the Marine Directive. The questions identified here could be the basis for the development of detailed check-lists to be used in the technical assessment. The assessment will primarily use the information provided in the reporting sheets, but also other information provided by Member States, i.e. the paper reports or the background documents (see Section 4 for more details).

The Commission (DG ENV, JRC) would also use the results of the technical assessment and the Member States’ reports to make an evaluation of the implementation of the Marine Directive, in cooperation with the EEA (Marine Directive Article 20.3.b) where it relates to the status of the marine environment, defining a baseline for the later evaluation of achievements and effectiveness of the Directive.

2.2.  What information will be used in the assessment?

For reporting under Articles 8, 9 and 10, Member States will provide one or more text-based reports ('paper' reports) covering the three articles collectively or separately. These should be transmitted in electronic format (as PDF files) via the EEA's ReportNet facility, so that they can be held in WISE (Water Information System for Europe).

Following agreement with the Marine Directors, Member States will also provide their reports under these articles according to the structure of so-called 'reporting sheets', provided electronically through ReportNet to be held in a marine module of WISE. These reporting sheets aim to capture the information in a structured and standardised manner across all Member States, which greatly facilitates their analysis and comparison.

Because Member States have established their marine strategies on the basis of a national political process involving stakeholders and subject to public participation, their ‘paper’ reports to the Commission, including their annexes, are the basis for the Article 12 assessment. The ‘reporting sheets’ will also be used as a means to provide structured and summarised information into the assessment process, along with the valuable information and explanation included in the paper report.

The reporting sheets have been developed in consultation with Member States and provide the specifications for the content of the reports. They are converted into a database tool and then schemas, which enable the information to be captured in standardised formats (e.g. use of specified data formats and term lists) for upload into the WISE system, and enable an electronic and automatic analysis of the information. In the reporting sheets the 'priority' information for the 2012 assessment (the ‘priority fields’ in dark orange cells) should have been provided by Member States by 15 October 2012; the remaining information in the reporting sheets (light orange cells) will be provided by 15 April 2013. This approach reflects the conclusion of the December 2011 meeting of the Marine Directors, who agreed on the prioritisation of the reporting sheets i.e. a number of fields in each reporting sheet have been identified as ‘priority fields’ and cover the most critical information necessary for the Article 12 assessment.